[Air-L] Ipads and fieldwork

[Charles Ess]

thanks, Mark - your larger post does a nice job, I think, of characterizing
the primary uses to which the device is suited / designed.
> 
> As for the question asked earlier, why an iPad as opposed to other
> tablets--was that serious or facetious?
I won't speak for the author of the question, but as a recent iPad owner, I
think it's a serious and important question.  From my perspective, the
inability to multitask coupled with the absence of a working file system
(unless I'm wrong - please correct if I am!) means for me that it is much
better suited to the sorts of uses you initially describe - light email,
web-browsing, etc. 
I also think it has promise as an e-Reader, which, as a traveling / gypsy
scholar, is tremendously inviting: that said, my first experiences in these
directions (no names, please), have been more ones of frustration with what
I can't do with a text rather than of joy with having a text handily
available.
Of course, it's also great for simply consuming media, if that's what you
want - let's not forget that someone/s are very interested in not only the
quality of our experience with the interfaces and the device, but also with
specific bottom lines.
But if I want to do at least my kind of serious work - multiple documents
open, multiple apps open, cutting-and-pasting between these when needed,
etc., alongside a solid Internet connection (the wifi reception on mine is
weak compared with my MacBook) - a laptop or equally capable tablet is not
just preferable but simply necessary.
As is often the case, then, it's not just a matter of "what you can do" (the
rhetoric too often associated with too many new devices and technologies
that we frankly don't yet entirely know what to do with) - what do you need
/ want to do?
(and please read all of this in a cordial, friendly tone, one grateful for
the discussion) 
sent from my MacBook (this time),
- charles ess

Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab
Helsingforsgade 14
8200 Århus N.
Denmark
mail: <imvce at hum.au.dk>
tel: (+45) 8942 9250

Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University, Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23




On 7/21/10 1:23 AM, "Mark Warschauer" <markw at uci.edu> wrote: